When we opened the curtains on the two enormous windows this morning we were greeted with the most stunning view down the coast of Sorrento and also of Jack’s nemesis, Mt Vesuvius. ‘Why didn’t you tell me we were staying near a volcano’ he worriedly stated. ‘Ah, it’s nothing’ we reassured him however later Corky and I did some research on it and realised that it is classified one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the millions of people living on its doorstep. Of course the most famous eruption was in AD79 when Pompeii was destroyed and since then it has erupted at least three-dozen times, the most recent was in March 1944. It was clearly due for another eurption ‘they’ reckoned. All this we kept to ourselves, Jack already was freaked out by being so close to a volcano, even if it was currently dormant with no signs of activity.
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| Jack keeping an eye on the volcano from our window |
Unfortunately the day was overcast with large storm clouds out to sea (and over the volcano which didn’t help Jack). Never mind, we got our cozzies on, had breakfast in the beautiful dining room that overlooked the glorious coast and then raced up to the pool. It was on the rooftop of the Hotel with even more spectacular open views. We grabbed some deckchairs and settled down just as it started to rain. It was only raining slightly so we let the kids keep swimming however as the black clouds continued to head over us and then the thunder and lightening started, we decided it was best to head inside. Thankfully there was a Playstation and the kids entertained themselves with this while Corky and I sat in the public lounge with the news on the TV and our computers. We kept an eye on the weather and ventured out to the pool again to only need to go back under cover when the rain started up again. Next to the pool is the Hotel café and we sat here and had some lunch while we watched the storm swirling in from the sea.
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| Hotel Bristol foyer |
The storm did finally clear up so we went to Positano for dinner. The drive is only 20 minutes from our Hotel but it took us over the hill and to the step coastline on the other side of the little peninsula. We were stunned by the incredible beauty of the coastline and its shear cliffs. The road wound and wound its way along the cliff edge with many hairpin turns and blind corners. The horror of some of these corners and turns with barely any barrier to the cliff edge was juxtaposed with the incredible view. Every now and then as we poked out around the edge of a cliff, we could see Positano.
The Italians either have no fear or are just plain crazy the way they drive, in particular on their mopeds. We have seen so many hair-raising incidents and plain stupidity that we now just laugh at it and realise that this is the way they drive. It was all so evident again on this coastline road as motorbikes sped past us on blind corners and even towards us on our side of the road right towards us as they overtook, most times we had to move out of their way!
Soon enough we were arriving in Positano, evident most impressively by the restaurants that lined the roads in which our large van had to squeeze through, we could almost reach out and grab their lobsters off their plates. No-one seemed to mind a van squeezing past their tables.
Down below off the beach, we could see many boats and yachts anchored in the small harbour of Positano. What stuck out the most was an easily recognisable boat to us. It was the Arctic P, James Packer’s boat. It use to be his Dad Kerry’s boat and is an old icebreaker that has been transformed into their holiday boat, this is why it was so recognisable, you don’t often see icebreakers in the Mediterranean. Apparently every June James and Erica go to the French Riveria to celebrate their wedding anniversary (they were married in a civil service in Antibes) and obviously they decided then to head around to Positano. We found out later that they had been there and gone and that Russell Crowe had joined them onboard for a while.
We wound carefully down the narrow one-way road towards the beach below. This road really makes you become one with pedestrians because there isn’t much room for both to comfortably share so we had to mingle; man and car. We wondered where on earth we would park and then right before our eyes a man jumped out and waved us into his parking station. Perfect. It was only 4 Euro an hour and they securely parked the car for you, no worries about us having to squeeze a large van into a small hole so to speak. Relieved of our parking duties, we walked around the bend and found the first lovely restaurant for dinner, Il Fornillo. Fortuitously our waitresses name was Margarita so the boys just had to have a pizza by the same name. I had a lovely clam spagetti and Corky had a seafood risotto which he later blamed for him being sick at 3am that night. While we ate geckos crawled on the walls around us and a cat strolled under our table. While we waited for our dinner, we marvelled at the incredible view down to the beach and out to the ocean. The weather was really balmy and once again we had to pinch ourselves to believe we were really here in Positano with these beautiful surroundings. I wander what the rest of the world was doing right now.
WEDNESDAY 6 JULY – SORRENTO, AMALFI COAST, ITALY
Today we had a wake up call for 6.45am so we could fit breakfast in the dining room with a view to die for, before we got on our tour bus to Pompeii. Our Tour Guide was an Italian lady called Lia and we were on tour with about 20 others of varying nationalities. It took about 30 minutes to get to Pompeii in which you could clearly see the monstrous volcano that had caused all the devastation of this city just under 2000 years ago. Our tour took about 2 hours with Lia giving a very detailed explanation and storyline of this ancient city. Once again, this is a place I had been before but I didn’t have a guide that time so it was good to learn more this time.
Only 2/3rds of the city has been excavated and at the rate they are excavating, they are only discovering one building approximately every 20 years. The reason it has slowed down is because they are now putting their resources towards maintaining and preserving what they have so far uncovered. Of the couple of hundred buildings they have uncovered, only about a dozen are able to be entered and seen by the public due to the rate of decay that they are facing. We saw evidence of the bright colours they used on their walls; reds, yellows, oranges and of the intricate details they painted in their pictures. Most houses were two storey but all top stories were destroyed. You could also see evidence of ornate tiling on the floors. The main road had large cobbled stones which had been worn away by the chariots. We saw many shops and so far 68 bakeries had been discovered. Inside these bakeries you could still see the ovens they used and when they were discovered, many had bread that had been baking in the ovens at the time of the eruption and therefore the archeologists discovered 81 carbonised loaves of bread. We saw amphitheatres and images of their beloved dogs, many who use to be chained to the front door to ward off unwelcome visitors.
The heat was incredible so we were grateful to find natural spring taps to drink from. We finally entered a large open forum area which clearly was the town’s central area, including banks and large columned buildings. From this central area, the view of Mt Vesuvius in the background loomed. Over to the edge of this area was a secure area where we could look through and see all the findings from the excavations. There were hundreds of pots, some wooden carts, statues, tools, kitchen equipment etc, all now plaster-casted by the lava and ash. Most interesting though were the plaster-casted remains of several people, all clearly frozen in the act of terror by what was happening to them. One man was sitting with knees bent up and hands covering his face, another was a pregnant woman lying face down and her face in her arms. There was also a dog who was bent around and clearly had been trying to free itself from its chains to escape. It was all surreal. This ended our tour and we all headed back to the cool comfort of the bus. Most slept on the way back to Sorrento. We arrived back at lunchtime and we headed straight up to the pool for a cool and refreshing swim. We stayed here all afternoon.
It was inevitable that we would end up in Positano again for dinner since we had enjoyed last night so much. This time we drove further down the hill and parked in a parking station at the furthest point we could closest to the beach. There were numerous laneways that wound the rest of the way down to the beach and all these laneways were filled with various shops, all obviously geared towards tourists. Once we came out at the bottom, we were amazed by all the restaurants that lined the black beach and were spoilt with choice as to which one we would choose. The one we went to was right on the beach and looked straight out to the sea. We had a bird’s eye view (also with the help of a zoom camera lens) of the Arctic P and all its goings on – little did we know at this stage that the Packers weren’t onboard anymore but it was exciting to speculate.
Once again the dinner was spectacular with fresh seafood pastas and calamari’s. The kids enjoyed playing on the beach after dinner before we headed back to our coast on the other side for the night. Unfortunately the windy roads got the better of Jack on the way home and he vomited across the back seat.
We were looking forward to a day by the pool today with nothing to do but doze and swim. It was going to be our last day of relaxation until Singapore. From here we were spending two days driving back up to Paris where we were going to Disneyland, then to busy London and finally Singapore.
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| View of Sorrento from our bedrooms |
We arrived just in time before breakfast finished at 10am and then off to the pool to resume our positions for the day. It was a sunny and hot day so the perfect place to be. Jack and Madi spent a lot of time with some new friends they had made, a boy and girl around their age from Ireland. They swam together and played Playstation together. Sophie perfected her underwater swimming technique and Harry continued his impressive swimming with his floaties. We moved only to roll over on the deckchair and to cool off in the pool.
Positano for our last night was an undisputed decision. We headed off a bit earlier tonight so we could catch the most of the fading sunlight, especially since the sun rose on the coast over Positano and set on the coast over Sorrento. The Arctic P had left. We wandered through a few of the shops and then found another lovely restaurant on the beach and an equally lovely meal of fresh seafood’s and pastas. After dinner while we finished our drinks (wine and beer) and the sun was setting, the kids played in the sand and on the water’s edge. It was a perfect ending to our visit to this paradise.
FRIDAY 8 JULY – SORRENTO, AMALFI COAST, ITALY
Up early today, we had a very long drive ahead of us. We were hoping to get up to Switzerland, maybe even France today because we had a total of almost 1700km’s to cover from Sorrento to Paris Disneyland. We hadn’t booked any accommodation because we were going to try and drive as far as we could today. We left at 9am and the Sat Nav estimated the drive would take us 15 hours straight there; without stops or traffic jams. If we could do 9 or 10 hours today that would be great.The time seemed to fly and we stopped at the outlet mall near where we were staying in Tuscany, for lunch. Corky just had to get a few last items before we left Italy.
It is amazing to see the transformation of the landscape as you head north of Naples. The general area for kilometres surrounding Naples is very run down and almost decrepit in some places, very poor looking but as we went up the A1 north the scenery very clearly changed as we approached the Tuscany region and beyond. Everything seemed much cleaner, the buildings were in better shape and the fields were beautifully kept with large rows of vines and olive trees. The old farmhouses were beautiful restored and preserved or falling down gracefully. The roads were much nicer to drive on too and we felt safer. Even at the toll booth on the freeway leaving Naples, there were beggars who wanted to help you with your payment at the toll machine. Even though the machine took coins, funnily enough it didn’t work and they told us we had to use notes, in other words, they hoped that they would get some of our change when it came out. He wanted to help but Corky refused, told him to get a job and drove off. Let’s get out of the south and back north. I didn’t have a good impression of Naples anyway since many years ago when I was here on the beach with my two friends, my girlfriend was robbed right in front of us (of course we didn’t realise till later that her bag with her wallet, credit card and airline ticket home were gone).
We drove up the A1 freeway past Rome, Florence and then headed towards the coast near Pisa and at Genoa, we then turned inland and north towards Switzerland. As we climbed up from the Italian coastline and into the surrounding mountains, the skies seemed to close in on us. We have had beautiful weather all the way with the temperature rising to 37 degrees at one stage and now the clouds were circling and low and the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. We still had our suntans to remind us it was summer.
As we went through the Italian Alps, the scenery was incredible. Hard to believe we were on the Mediterranean Coast this morning and now here we are in the Alps with incredible mountains around us and snow on top. As much as I love the coast and the ocean, you can’t help but be impressed and in awe of the incredible views and monstrosity of mountain ranges, they really are majestic, even eery. Everything looked very Swiss with the chalets on the mountainsides and you could see the ski chairlifts. We wound through many tunnels until we finally came to the tunnel of all tunnels; the Mont Blanc tunnel. Before we could go in the tunnel we had to pay a 38 Euro toll. It was also the border because half way through the 11.6km tunnel we crossed from Italy into France. Out the other side we pulled over and you could look straight up to the view above of Mont Blanc however unfortunately it was very cloudy and we couldn’t quite see the top. The traffic coming into the tunnel from the other side was kilometres long.
We made it to Geneva, Switzerland, 11 hours and about 1300kms after we left Sorrento, Italy. We arrived at 10pm just as it had got dark and it didn’t take too long to find a hotel for the night, a Best Western in the centre of Geneva. Of the whole 15 weeks we are away, tonight was the only night that we didn’t have pre-booked accommodation.
At 10.45pm we finally sat down in a Chinese restaurant to eat dinner. Finally something other than pasta and pizza and it was truly the best Chinese we have ever had though unfortunately the staff were very unpleasant, maybe because they had planned to go home just as we arrived. We were back to Swiss Francs which we didn’t have but luckily they took Euro’s.
Some more stats so far:
- Two more suitcases have needed to be purchased (total new suitcases now = 3)
- 15,243 km’s driven
- An extra 5 new pairs of shoes, therefore a total of 35 new pairs of shoes
- Two pairs of worn out shoes by Trine, now both have gone to shoe heaven (or the tip)
- Three visits to the same Outlet Village in Tuscany
- Roman relic sightings; infinite
- Margarita pizzas eaten; even more infinite
- Shocking Italian drivers; even more infinite + 1
- Corky’s top driving speed; 170 km/h
- Hottest day so far; 39 degrees
- Increased knowledge of foreign languages; zero.
Till next instalment .... x
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